The seizure of the documents and the clothes she was wearing happened last week. A lawsuit has since been filed on her behalf. Here's another story.

The lawsuit claims excessive force, assault, battery and a violation of Pinnock's due process rights. It states that Pinnock "suffered great mental and physical pain, suffering, anguish, fright, nervousness, anxiety, grief shock, humiliation, indignity, and embarrassment" and seeks monetary damages to be determined at trial.

What legal excuse did they use to get around the fact that this is a gross violation of federal HIPA statutes? Seems like it just spreads the shit from the cops hands to the hospitals. Maybe they can smear some on the walls when they go to court as well...

I am normally a proponent of non-violence. Nonetheless, I have to ask: would the total number of murders, tortures, beatings, and sexual assaults in society decrease over the long term if people, vigilante style, started shooting pigs like this?

What would the math look like?

A) Increase in the number of killed and harmed cops (not a good thing)

B) Increase in the number of killed and harmed non-cops from reprisals (not a good thing)

C) Decrease in the overall number of killed and harmed non-cops because the cops tread more carefully (a good thing)

If C > A + B, is there a moral imperative for militias formed against the police in the service of the public good (as measured by overall decrease in violence)?

Understand: I am not interested in revenge, feuding violence, etc. I am interested in understanding how we can minimize the total violence in our society, because something is manifestly broken with what we are doing at present.

The hospital most likely uses electronic medical records, so I'm guessing the cops received paper copies of the data that is currently stored on the hospital patient record database. Also,if the cops were serving a court-issued warrant, I'm not sure if the hospital had any legal grounds to withhold the records.

I am interested in understanding how we can minimize the total violence in our society, because something is manifestly broken with what we are doing at present.

Fortunately, violence in society has been steadily decreasing since the mid 90's and is now at early 60's levels, I believe.

That said, while I understand the impulse to violently deal with violent cops (I'd love to deliver a soccer kick to the face of the one in the video), lawless violence, historically, only creates more of the same. It's going to take a lot of videos and lawsuits and cops in prison before the corrupt culture that exists in many, if not most, police organizations (especially the unions), begins to change.

It's called a police state. If you think your social status protects you from the treatment she received, you may be right... for the time being anyway. The people who are so shocked SHOCKED! that such things could happen in this democracy, obviously were never poor. The only thing different from this instance is that it was caught on video.

Good points. From what I can gather from web sleuthing, they are using Cerner Millennium, but are in the middle of a two-year rollout of their new ORCHID system. This is supposed to tie together & replace 6 different legacy systems. My guess is that inpatient psych would be with core hospital intake and WOULD probably be electronic. So the reporting is a little weird. They wouldn't DELETE the medical record because it was seized. They'd most likely just walk away with a copy, so the reporting using the word SEIZED is probably overblown. Unless.... that dept still had a paper record and the police just walked off with it. Which would totally screw with patient care. So I don't know specifically what happened, but it is likely just to have been an electronic copy or stack of printouts.

Anyone work for LA County and want to find out if the psych ward uses EMR or if they are still on paper?

All true. Unfortunately in the latest instances, even when cops are recorded beating/choking someone to death (Fullerton PD, NYPD, etc), the fuse just fizzles out before justice can be meted out to the guilty LEOs. Cause no citizen wants to truly believe that crooked cops exist, all evidence to the contrary.

And police depts and their union reps are way, way too good at deflecting blame and playing the "we're the thin blue line between you and drug-crazed, killer domestic terrorists!" card. Review boards and committees endlessly delay and appeal any conceivable punishment and the corrupt, scumbag cops just go right back into the system. At some point they stopped policing themselves and became the wolves watching over the sheep.

All of which might be correctable, but combined with judicial deference, federal overreach and The War on Terror™, we're truly fucked for the foreseeable future.

I don't work for either, but my aunt is an infectious specialist in L.A. They use both electronic records (for clarity - handwriting can get someone killed) and handwritten notes. I see a neurologist twice a year for epilepsy, and he takes handwritten notes for my chart. The combination of practice ensures that a doctor can prove they physically saw the patient if it ever is brought up as a question.

For a psych in-patient, the handwritten notes can be explosive material, and that's what they may have been after. The patient's standard chart would be produced electronically, but handwritten notes would be included on it.

Aikimo, I know convictions for violent crime have been decreasing. But it seems like state violence has been increasing, both in terms of frequency, and degree. If this is a misperception on my part, I would love some data that can help me correct my view (and breathe a little easier).